


as one loves certain obscure things

by gdgdbaby



Series: fill my mouth with your name [3]
Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Bodyswap, F/M, M/M, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Polyamory, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-12 02:01:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12948900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gdgdbaby/pseuds/gdgdbaby
Summary: Lovett looks up from whatever he's doing on Twitter and notices her staring. "What?" he asks, the hand on her ankle going tight.Emily shrugs. "Just missed you," she says, and feels Jon hook his chin over her shoulder, a silent agreement. "We're glad you're home."Lovett ducks his head. "I was only gone for three days," he mumbles, but he sounds pleased.





	as one loves certain obscure things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [daisysusan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisysusan/gifts).



> pod save the wedding, or how emily learned to stop worrying and love her jons.
> 
> i was about 80% finished with the first draft of this when i became privy to some clarifying information about the circumstances of emily and jon's first meeting and subsequent relationship, and ended up being too lazy to do all the edits required to make it completely #truetolife, so please just consider this an alternate reality where they met and started dating after emily graduated from college. *jazz hands*
> 
> also, parts of this probably won't make a ton of sense without having read the first two stories, so i'd recommend doing that before proceeding! thanks to maggie and lal for their hand holding and link providing and inestimable advice, and #validateme for the cheerleading when i needed it most. title, as ever, from [sonnet xvii](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49236/one-hundred-love-sonnets-xvii) by pablo neruda, which is basically the epigraph of the story at this point.

Emily's in the living room with the reception seating arrangements spread out on the floor around her when Lovett gets back from DC. It's Sunday afternoon, and Jon's taken the dogs out so Emily can think in peace—try to figure out last minute adjustments, how to put Aunt Helen with the extended family without pissing cousin Robert off—and definitely not because she'd snapped at him earlier for stepping too close to one of her index cards.

There is no stress quite like wedding stress, Howli told her last summer, and she and Dan hadn't even gone out of the state. Emily's taking all of next week off to make sure everything's set before they fly to Portland, and it still feels like she doesn't have enough time.

She hears the telltale whirring of Lovett's Jeep, idling at the curb in front of the house, and then the engine shuts off. She glances up when the front door opens and closes, watches Lovett wheel his suitcase inside. He looks tired from the cross-country flight, hat jammed messily over his unruly hair. His face goes soft when he sees her, takes in the note cards with names scribbled on them, crossed out, over and over again. "Still isn't working?"

Emily tips against the couch, head flopping back, and pushes her glasses up to rub her eyes. She can feel the beginnings of a tension headache forming at her temples. "I'm about to lose my damn mind," she mumbles, voice low, and then the edge of the sofa dips. Lovett's hands slide into her hair, warm and steady.

They stay like that for a minute, Lovett's fingers scratching against her scalp, Emily taking long, even breaths. When she opens her eyes again, Lovett's peering thoughtfully down at the arrangement. "Put Robert with the other twentysomethings at table eight, and swap Helen and Mark at table six so she doesn't get into an argument with Robert's dad about what kinds of people his son chooses to date."

"And which sucker at table eight gets the boot?"

Lovett rolls his eyes. "They're young. They can squeeze." Emily sighs, turns her face into his leg, forehead resting against his knee. "Hey, come on," he says, gentler. He runs his fingers through her hair one more time. "Stop thinking about it for a while, okay? We'll get Soothe, make Jon order food when he gets back. Listen to some Taylor Swift."

"The keys to my heart," Emily mutters, but she's smiling when she sits up. She reaches out, squeezes a hand around his calf. "Thanks, Lovett."

He helps her pick up the index cards, slot them in her planning binder. Jon slinks back in with Pundit and Leo ten minutes later, wearing a hangdog expression. Emily sighs, rising from the sofa to meet him, and presses a brief, close-mouthed kiss against his lips.

"Sorry," she says quietly after she pulls back, and he loops an arm around her waist.

"S'okay," he says, dropping another kiss at her hairline. "You've been doing a lot." Forgiveness, like love, comes easy for Jon. It's one of the things she likes best about him, the breadth and depth of his feelings, the way they seem to light him up from the inside. Jon's always had zero poker face; all things considered, he'd be a terrible politician. The thought makes her grin. "Welcome back," Jon continues, tipping his head, as Lovett stretches out on the couch. "How was the swamp?"

"Swampy," Lovett returns, dry. "How was your birthday? Sorry I had to skip out to go build the media empire."

"It was—nice," Jon says, and flushes. Emily smirks. They'd gone out for dinner with friends on Friday night, and then they'd come home and Emily had kept him on edge for ages, hand moving studiously slow as she talked about how good he was, just waiting. How much Lovett would enjoy watching him like this. They would've called him, she's pretty sure, if Lovett hadn't been busy recording.

Lovett's eyebrows arch, and Jon coughs into his hand. "Uh huh," Lovett says, the corner of his mouth rising, too. He leans back against the armrest of the couch, thighs dropping open a little, and Jon inhales enough that Emily can feel it, the swell of his chest moving against her. "You should tell me all about it later."

They order takeout from the Italian place on Beverly and save the massage for another time. Jon pops open a bottle of something nice and fizzy when their food gets here, and doesn't even say anything when she puts 1989 on the Sonos. Two out of three isn't bad.

It's not until they're curled up on the couch after dinner, though—her feet tucked in Lovett's lap and Jon's fingers working out the knots in her neck, the dogs snoozing between them—that she can feel herself finally starting to relax. Lovett's switched the TV to something with explosions, but none of them are really paying enough attention to watch. The volume's turned down low. Lovett's busy with his phone, other hand playing absently with her ankle. Emily could probably fall asleep right here.

They've lived across the street from Lovett since they moved to LA, have basically been around each other all the time since then, but it was still surprising how often she turned to tell Lovett something this weekend and felt her chest twist because he just—wasn't there. It was kind of funny how empty the bed felt without him, how quickly she'd gotten used to being three instead of two. Jon woke up on Saturday morning and must've been thinking about it too; he rolled to close the extra space between them and asked, "Why does a queen suddenly feel too extravagant now?" and chuckled when she burrowed deeper beneath the covers and clamped her arms around his waist. Later, when Emily was going through the minute-by-minute schedule breakdown for the ceremony, he said, "We should probably have a plan B in place, just in case we do swap." It sounded like something he'd been quietly turning over in his head, another item to include on the preparation checklist because it was important to consider. Because it would mean something to Lovett, that they thought of this. A plan for rain, a plan for delayed travel, a plan for the improbable scenario where Leo ran off with the rings. A plan for if her Jons got stuck in each other's bodies.

"For Lovett's peace of mind, at least," she'd agreed, and smiled into the kiss Jon gave her.

Lovett looks up from whatever he's doing on Twitter and notices her staring. "What?" he asks, the hand on her ankle going tight.

Emily shrugs. "Just missed you," she says, and feels Jon hook his chin over her shoulder, a silent agreement. "We're glad you're home."

Lovett ducks his head. "I was only gone for three days," he mumbles, but he sounds pleased.

 

 

The summer after graduation felt like an exercise in advanced juggling: new job, new city, new phase of life, trading homework and exams for waking up at five in the morning to compile press clippings for Senator Brown. Being an intern and being a full-time employee were two different animals entirely; her new responsibilities seemed endless. If she self-medicated with a little too much alcohol sometimes, well, everyone else around her was doing the same thing.

She wasn't expecting to meet Jon. With hours on the Hill the way they were, romance was the last thing on her mind. He almost spilled a drink on her while she was bar-hopping with coworkers in late June, though, and then made up for it after their groups combined by giving an impassioned defense of auto unions in the face of globalization and free trade agreements. "That was possibly the sexiest thing anyone's ever said about NAFTA," she said later, tongue loose from several amaretto sours, and felt her face go hot when he turned to look at her.

"Were you expecting anything else?" he asked, raising an eyebrow, with the same cockiness as when he'd come over earlier and genuinely thought _I work at the White House_ wasn't the most overused pick-up line in a twenty mile radius.

She rolled her eyes. "Honestly," she said, with as disparaging a tone as she could muster under the circumstances, looking him up and down, "when we first walked in, I thought you were a Republican," and he threw his head back and laughed with his whole body. Her eyes followed the smooth arc of his neck, took in the way his face crinkled, and she thought, _oh, no_.

She didn't go home with him that night, or after their first real date on July Fourth—but by November, every time 22 came up on her iPod shuffle, all she could think about was the way his hands fit around her waist, how he always pulled her in for one more kiss before she had to leave the mornings after she'd stayed over. Such a cliche, the way every love song seemed to apply in the throes of infatuation, but maybe these things were cliches for a reason. Jon wrote speeches for the President of the United States, kept long, strange hours perfecting the kind of language meant to move mountains, and he still took the time to learn how to play Emily's favorite pop songs on the upright piano in his apartment. Still grinned, gap-toothed and silly, when she sang them back at him. Some nights, he felt like the only stable thing she had to hold onto. How else was she supposed to feel?

 

 

Tuesday morning, Emily heads to the gym early, manages to turn some of her nervous energy into the clean burn of a good workout. She steps out of the shower in the locker room feeling like a new person, and grabs an early lunch with Hanna, afterwards. "Tommy's been practicing like crazy," Hanna tells her drily over their sandwiches. "I'm very sick of Viva la Vida."

Emily laughs. "Just twelve more days, I promise."

Hanna takes a sip of her drink and eyes her over the rim. "How are you holding up?"

"Better than I thought," she says, exhaling, and then continues, without thinking: "They've been really good."

Hanna raises an eyebrow. "They?"

"Jon, obviously, but Lovett's also been helping a bunch," Emily says evenly. "He's actually really organized, when it counts. And—you know he used to officiate for friends back in DC?"

"Mm," Hanna says, expression turning thoughtful. "Honestly seems like a waste that he's still single."

Something in Emily's chest freezes up. She takes a big bite of her sandwich to hide it, and it's difficult to swallow. _He isn't_ , she wants to say, vehement, _he's ours_ , but that isn't her secret to tell—or it isn't just hers.

The thought stays with her through the rest of the meal, on the drive home. Jon and Lovett both seem content with the mostly discreet arrangement they have, but the more Emily mulls it over, the less certain she is about it. If they love Lovett, shouldn't that present itself in a demonstrative way? Shouldn't that mean something? They've already essentially moved in together, but wouldn't Lovett, who throws himself into life with such verve, who never does anything by halves, appreciate more?

She spends the rest of the day alternating between picking at her half-finished vows and bent over a blueprint of the property at Biddeford Pool, drawing out different possible escape routes, scribbling notes in the margins. She falls asleep on the couch late in the afternoon, when the sun's casting long shadows across the floorboards, and wakes up again when the armrest shifts. Lovett's perched near her head, hand falling automatically to her hair. She can hear Jon putting groceries away in the kitchen. "It looks like you're casing a place out for some sort of heist," Lovett observes. "Have I completely misunderstood what PR consultants do this whole time?"

She pushes herself up into a sitting position and snorts. "Unfortunately, my job isn't nearly that interesting," she says, rubbing her eyes, jaw cracking with her yawn. "This is for our Plan B."

Lovett's eyebrows rise. "Plan B," he says, the words crisply enunciated for emphasis.

"In case you and Jon swap," she says, and Lovett goes unnaturally still. "Jon and I talked about it while you were gone, and—we thought having a backup itinerary might help you feel better about the idea."

"Oh," Lovett says, throat working. "That's—" He swallows harder, blinking. "That's so much trouble. You didn't have to go through all this."

Emily rolls her eyes. "Of course we did." She bends over the blueprint again. "I think we're going to have to loop my dad into it no matter what," she says, tapping the paper with a finger. "Since he's—you know, officiating."

Lovett doesn't say anything. When she turns to look at him, he's gaping at her. Emily would laugh if she wasn't being serious. "Judge Black?" he says, sounding faint.

She shrugs. Jon comes back with the contents of a fancy adult Lunchable arranged on a large plate and plops it down next to the blueprint. "Did you figure it out?" he asks, nibbling on a piece of brie.

"Kinda," she says, and turns back to Lovett. "We don't have to tell him everything." Her voice turns dry. "Though I think you'll find that he's pretty open-minded."

Lovett huffs. "Open-minded enough to accept the premise that his future son-in-law sometimes isn't his future son-in-law?"

"I think he'd accept whatever made me happy," Emily points out, and Lovett's mouth quirks.

"Okay," he says slowly, looking between the two of them. "What's your plan?"

"Well, Dad's gonna have the certificate," she says.

"If anything happens," Jon says, settling on the couch next to Emily, "we'll do our vows in the house and sign the papers with you as our witness, and then you can go out there and pretend to be me."

Lovett shakes his head. "Have you even finished your vows? What am I gonna rehearse?"

Jon doesn't answer, a sheepish expression flitting across his face, and Lovett starts laughing into his hand. "You're the worst," Emily complains. "What the hell. Here I am, slaving over mine to make them perfect, and you just—ugh."

"Now you know what it felt like to write with him for three years," Lovett says. He glances at the blueprint again. "So what's all this Ocean's Eleven stuff for?"

Emily snatches a cracker off the plate, drapes a dainty slice of soppressata over it. "Depending on the timing, people might be in different parts of the house. Lots of moving pieces to consider. Just trying to make sure we won't run into anyone you wouldn't want to know about—our situation." She clears her throat.

"You really thought of everything," Lovett says. For a minute, his face is unreadable. Emily's stomach clenches—maybe it was too much, maybe they should've talked it through more—but he grins a beat later, rolls his shoulders back and leans over to snag a piece of melon. "Too bad I can't use this in my rehearsal dinner toast. It'd be a great story."

Jon guffaws harder than he should for something that isn't even really a joke, but then, that's nothing new.

 

 

She knew of Lovett long before she ever met him, which was only a problem because it made him seem larger than life. By the time Jon left the White House, they'd met most of the important people in each other's circles—friends, assorted family members, roommates, President Obama. Lovett, by virtue of living clear across the country, seemed to be the last of the greats.

It was just different with the friends she could meet in person, like Tommy, who was sweet and earnest and lovely, Cody and his mountain man beard, Alyssa, who told her every terrible story about the campaign trail that she could ask for. The main things Emily knew about Lovett were that he was writing in Hollywood and Jon glowed every time Lovett called to ask him for script advice. The way Jon and Tommy and all the rest talked about Lovett was intimidating, not because they built him up—the stories were largely about how much of a disaster human he was, actually—but because she could tell how much Jon cared about him. How much Jon valued his opinion. She tried not to think about what would happen if she and Lovett didn't get along, because there wasn't much she could do about it, but it was hard, sometimes.

Ultimately, it ended up happening by surprise. Jon let her into the apartment on the Thursday night after he put in his two weeks notice, and she said, continuing the text conversation they'd been having, "Guys, seriously. Fenway Strategies is an awful name. Your damn wifi is already named after the Red Sox, Jon, what more do you want?"

Tommy laughed from the couch, which she was expecting, but a twin peal of laughter came from the iPad Jon was holding. He flipped it toward her, and there was Lovett, curly-haired and curious, swallowed by an enormous hoodie.

"I like this one," he said, propping his chin in his hand and grinning. "Please keep her. She's got moxie." _Moxie_ , Jon mouthed at her, incredulous. "You need to be dating someone who can take you down a peg or two."

Jon rolled his eyes. "I'm hanging up," he threatened, but carried his iPad back to the couch instead, propped it up on the coffee table. Emily sat down in the free seat next to Jon, heart suddenly racing in her throat.

"Hi," Lovett continued. He was still smiling, which seemed like a good sign. "I'm Lovett. You must be Emily. I don't know why Jon's been hiding you from me, but I suspect it's because he'd rather not be double-teamed all the time."

"Phrasing," Tommy put in, before sticking his nose back in a sheaf of papers.

Emily huffed out a laugh of her own. "It's good to finally meet you virtually," she said, sliding her bag off her shoulder and mirroring his stance, hand cupping her cheek. "I've heard tell of the legend."

Lovett twinkled at her through the screen. "Only good things, I hope," he said, and Emily replied, "Well," fully prepared to throw everyone under the bus, and they were off to the races.

 

 

Most of the assorted wedding knicknacks have already been shipped to the house in Maine—the monogrammed napkins, all the paperware—but the Thursday before they fly out, Emily gets a cancellation email about the favors they'd decided on, personalized bottle opener keychains they'd ordered from a vendor in New Hampshire. She spends the next two hours trying to talk to someone who's at least willing to explain why this happened, and only manages to get some vague explanation about the laser engraver breaking down.

"Full refund!" the man on the other end of the line chirps, as if that's the real issue here.

By the time Jon and Lovett get back from the office, she's pacing next to the dining table and chewing on her nails, a ball of tightly wound anxiety gathered in her stomach. Leo bounds up to her first, head tipped to the side, and Emily scoops him up, presses her face into his fur. _You're not going to cry_ , she thinks sternly. _You're going to figure this out. It isn't the end of the world._

"What's wrong?" Jon says immediately, walking over to run a hand up her side.

"The wedding favor people cancelled last minute," she mumbles, trying to modulate her breathing. 

"Shit," Jon says. He squeezes her hip, jaw flexing. "That's—alright. It's okay. We can just do something else."

"So soon?"

Jon bites his lip and gives her a determined look. "We can think of something. It doesn't have to be the keychains. What other ideas did we have?"

"They're on my phone," Lovett pipes up, folding himself into one of the chairs at the table. He's already scrolling through his notes app. Jon maneuvers her toward him, hands gentle, and peers over Lovett's shoulder. "A lot of these seem doable."

"We might have to get them made here and bring them with us to cut out shipping time," Jon says. "Shot glasses?"

"Too heavy," Emily says. "Also, not shatterproof."

Lovett scrolls down a bit more. "How about koozies?"

Emily sends him a wavering smile. "I should probably be concerned about how many of these are alcohol-related."

Lovett laughs. "My advice is to just lean into it. Koozies are light and easy."

"Koozies with Pod Save the Wedding printed on them," Jon says, decisive, squeezing her hip again, and relief spreads out from the center of Emily's chest, unraveling slowly. There are people around her that she can trust to pick up the slack when she's in over her head.

Lovett flips to his text messages, fingers flying over the screen. "We can get the Friend of the Pod koozie people to do it. They can get a rush job sent through."

Emily leans against the back of his chair and nods. "How long will it take?"

"Maybe a couple of days?" He tips his head back to look at her, eyes clear. "I'm flying out later, so I can fill an extra suitcase and lug them all over." The corner of his mouth jumps. "TSA is gonna have a field day with that, but you know. Needs must."

"Thank you," Emily says, and it comes out kind of thick.

"It's no trouble," he says, light, and then, when he sees her swipe her knuckles against her eyes: "Oh, no, Em—don't."

"Sorry," she says, a reflex, as Jon's arm rises to curl around her shoulders. "It's stupid."

Jon kisses the side of her head, mouth warm against her temple. "It's not stupid," he murmurs. She sighs, shaky, and sways into him. "Babe, when's the last time you ate?"

"Uh," Emily says, blinking rapidly. She'd accidentally skipped lunch to try and sort out this mess. "I had half a bagel after the Comey testimony this morning, I think."

"C'mon, Emily," Lovett says, cajoling. He turns, legs squishing against the chair-back, and opens the Postmates app on his phone, starts tapping around. "Forgetting to eat is a me thing, not a you thing."

"He actually burst into tears at the office before the State of the Union in 2011 because he was so tired and unfed," Jon comments, and dodges out of the way when Lovett tries to smack him.

"Isn't that less an indictment of me and more of your terrible workplace practices, Favreau?"

Jon makes a face. "It's not my fault you decided a twenty-four hour IV drip of Diet Coke was acceptable." He tips his head back at Emily, smiling. "He was all better after he took a nap and Cody brought him a footlong from Subway."

"You know I like my footlongs," Lovett says, waggling his eyebrows, and grins when they both start laughing.

 

 

They moved in across the street from Lovett at the end of 2014, and Emily promptly got sick. Jon was up in San Francisco for a business trip that entire week, and Emily jolted awake early Wednesday morning, in an unfamiliar city, with the type of fever that would probably lay her out for days. Not the greatest timing.

Thirty minutes after she texted Jon and called out from work, there was a knock on the door. Emily shuffled miserably to answer it, doped up and woozy on Nyquil because it was the only thing in the medicine cabinet, and Lovett breezed in with a flurry of plastic bags, his laptop tucked beneath one arm. "Lovett?" she croaked, pushing her hair out of her face.

"Hey," he said, mouth tight with concern, and carefully set the bags down on the floor. There was a question in his eyes when he reached out, tentative, but she leaned into the cool touch of his palm against her forehead. "Jon asked me to check on you. How are you feeling?"

"Truly pathetic," she said, closing her eyes for a moment when his hand dropped away. She tried to pull her thoughts together. "Don't you have work?"

The corner of Lovett's mouth twitched as she looked at him again. "A palpable hit for someone recently funemployed," he said solemnly, pressing a hand to his chest, and then shook his head when Emily opened her mouth to apologize. "I'm just kidding. Writers keep their own schedules, you know. Go lie back down."

The sheets on their bed were sweaty and stale, and the room needed to be aired out before she felt comfortable sleeping in it again, so she dragged a clean blanket to the couch, head pillowed against the armrest. The sound of Lovett puttering around the kitchen managed to lull her into a light doze. When she woke up again, the edge of the couch dipping as Lovett sat down, the whole house smelled like chicken broth. Her stomach squirmed, empty. Lovett helped her sit up before picking a bowl off the coffee table.

"The best matzo ball soup Los Angeles has to offer, courtesy of me," he said, eyes crinkled. "Hungry?"

She was. The first spoonful went down hot and easy, and so did the next, and the next. "Shit. This is delicious."

Lovett ducked his head. "It's like one of two things I actually know how to make, so you caught me on a good day. And the matzo meal I had was about to expire, anyway—"

"Lovett," Emily cut in, and he snapped his mouth shut. "Thank you," she said, imbuing it with as much sincerity as she could. He beamed at her, face shining with it, and let her keep eating.

 

 

They swap bodies again Monday night, while Jon and Emily are trying to finish packing for the next three weeks. Emily's stuffing a bag of makeup in the inside pocket of her bigger suitcase when Lovett reemerges from the bowels of their closet, holding two different shirts to his chest.

"Should I go with the boring stripes or the boring checkers?" he asks, bouncing forward on the balls of his feet.

Emily snorts. "Both, if you can fit them," she says, straightening up. "Tell Jon to get back in here with the luggage scale when you've finished making sartorial decisions for him."

"Ugh, fine," he says. He lingers by the door after he's finished shoving the shirts inside one suitcase, hand on his hip. "How can you always tell?"

Emily wiggles her fingers at him. "Magic," she says, and grins when he pouts at her.

Jon drops them off at the airport the next morning, Pundit in the backseat to keep him company on the drive home. "I really hope I don't have to do an entire Lovett or Leave It show by myself tomorrow," he says as he's helping them move all the luggage out of the trunk.

"You're right, that's definitely more stressful than having to recite your unwritten wedding vows," Lovett says, deadpan, and doesn't seem to notice the way Emily goes kind of stiff. "I have a brand to maintain. Think you can handle it?"

Jon sets the last suitcase on the sidewalk, dusting his hands off, and jumps back into the driver's seat of Lovett's Jeep. "If I can get this thing home in one piece, then I can do anything," he says, and laughs when Lovett sends him a rude gesture before he peels away from the curb.

They're sitting at the gate waiting to board when Emily nudges Lovett's ankle with her foot, murmurs, "You're really okay with this, right?" Lovett sends her an inquiring look, and she bites her lip. "Getting married by proxy, I guess. Pretending to be Jon, if it comes down to it. You haven't made a big deal out of it, but I know it's a lot to ask."

Lovett's face (a patently Lovett expression scrawled across Jon's face, and isn't that still a trip?) does something funny. "Emily—"

"I just don't want you to feel obligated to say yes," she says in a rush. She looks down, buries her hands in Leo's fur, scritching along his ears. "This whole thing with the switching bodies is already a lot, and everything that's happened since it started…" She takes a deep breath, lets it out. "Jon and I love each other, so we're getting married in four days. And we love you, but what does that look like? It doesn't seem like it should be something we want to hide."

Lovett doesn't say anything for a moment, but he hooks an arm over her shoulders, tips his head against hers. They stare out at the airplanes taxiing in and out, the slow crunch of their wheels over the tarmac. "I don't feel obligated," he says at last, cadence slow and deliberate, like it always gets when he's trying to choose his words carefully. Sincerity, Emily's found, runs deep in Lovett; you just have to be patient with him. "Or, well—there are certain choices you make because you love someone, right? Because you want them to be happy."

"We want you to be happy, too," Emily insists.

Lovett's hand tightens around the curve of her shoulder. "I am." The span of a heartbeat passes, and then another, and then he says, "I don't think we're hiding, necessarily. I just think I've spent too much of my life worrying about what I look like to other people, and I don't need everyone in the world to know about this part of it yet."

Emily nods slowly, considering. "I think Tommy might already know, by the way," she says, mouth twisting. "He's definitely noticed that you brought all your gaming stuff over to our house."

"Yeah." Lovett huffs. "Tommy probably knows, because he doesn't count as _other people_. He's family. And because Jon can't keep a straight face around him to save his life," he says, which is also true. "Tommy's just too damn polite to ask directly. I'm sure Andy and Molly have their suspicions, too. But, you know, when we move into the new house—" Emily sucks in a breath. "It'll be more obvious. Right now, it's none of anyone's business. I just—I like this. I like being included, I like feeling like a part of something. I love Jon, and I love you." She already knew that, but hearing it out loud makes something in her chest clench every time. He turns, mouth brushing against the crown of her head. "And there's no one I'd rather get married by proxy to more than you. Okay?"

"Okay," she says, voice wobbly.

Lovett shakes his head, cheek rubbing against her hair. "God damn it, Emily, you know I'm a sympathetic crier," he says, and then they're just two people getting a little weepy at the airport together, watching the planes fly in low. Leo gets up on his paws and sniffs at her neck before edging toward Lovett, licking his chin. "Hey, buddy," he says, and if his voice is too rough, Emily knows better than to bring it up.

She can tell the exact moment they swap back, later, in the air, because Jon goes rigid in his seat, and his fingers curl tighter in Leo's fur. He minimizes Twitter, and Emily looks away when he pulls up Word, his half-finished vows. "Would've been nice to miss the entire flight," he says, voice scratchy and dry, and glances at her screen. She'd just switched to the Sessions hearing five minutes ago; Senator Warner's about to give his remarks. Jon takes the earbud she offers him. "Uplifting stuff on the way to wedding weekend, huh?"

"You know our long national nightmare waits for no one," Emily says, and leans over to tuck her head against Jon's shoulder.

 

 

By the next summer, they'd traded spare keys with Lovett; he was over all the time anyway, and they dogsat for each other enough that it made sense. If he stopped by more often than was strictly necessary once ceded the power to let himself into their house at will, well—

"Lovett's just never been good at being alone," Jon explained over brunch in August, on a rare Saturday Lovett wasn't eating with them because he was out of town. Jon sounded fond, and then he sounded worried. "I hope it doesn't bother you that he's always here."

The thing was—it didn't, even though she had a vague sense that maybe it should. Lovett was loud, could be prickly and particular, and he had a habit of arriving at their door exactly when their takeout orders did. He also enthusiastically graded guys on The Bachelorette with her, though, and didn't mind when she fell asleep on his shoulder halfway through a Lord of the Rings marathon, despite his general distaste for casual touch and his offense on Peter Jackson's behalf. He was older, like most of Jon's other friends, but he didn't use kid gloves with her when it really counted. He asked for her advice while hanging upside down on their couch, trying to figure out where to go with the latest pilot he was trying to develop. He let her yell at him about the Ohio state legislature, and yelled back about how Cuomo and de Blasio's pissing contest was a huge distraction from actual issues affecting real people.

"Emily," Jon said, breaking through her thoughts. His face was lined with concern, and he was cracking his knuckles absently, a familiar nervous tic. She'd waited too long to answer. "Hey. I can tell him to cool it, if you want."

Something in Emily recoiled at that idea. It would be like asking Jon to cut off one of his own limbs. Conversations between Jon and Lovett were full of well-worn arguments: Starbucks vs. Dunkin, reclining chair etiquette on long flights, whether graphic tees were appropriate workplace attire, the individual merits of accessorizing with expensive watches or boat shoes or baseball caps or the same beat-up yellow headphones every day. They never cohabited, but they were around each other virtually every waking hour for three years, and that showed in the way Jon could guess Lovett's favorite order from the Thai place around the corner without being asked, how Lovett always knew the exact amount of cream and sugar to put in Jon's coffee. They were so different, but sometimes it felt like they'd lived entire lives in one another's heads.

Emily liked watching them together; specifically, she liked watching Jon laugh. It was how they first met, the pale column of Jon's neck exposed in a crowded bar in Georgetown, and you were supposed to start as you meant to go on. Lovett was the person that made Jon laugh best and most, and somehow, that didn't make her feel jealous. It just made her want Lovett around more.

She speared a piece of breakfast potato on her fork, shook her head, and smiled. "No, I don't want," she said, and watched Jon's expression slowly clear. In retrospect, that was probably the first time she consciously acknowledged that Lovett might be—different, not just for him, but for her, too. The first time she thought, _oh_ and _hm_ and _maybe_ , even if she didn't have the exact words for it yet.

"Yeah?" Jon said, mouth curving upward.

She kicked him lightly under the table and said, "Yeah," legs swinging. "I mean, it's Lovett. Where else would I get my daily dose of balanced, bipartisan political coverage?"

Jon laughed, dopey and appreciative. It made Emily want to kiss him, so she leaned in close, hand curling against his on the table, and did.

 

 

On Thursday, Emily and Abby go out for sister brunch in Portland and get back to the house in time to catch the end of her dad's interview for the pod. Tommy's laptop is on a bongo drum and Jon has his dumb recording headphones on, the ones that make his face look even longer than it actually is, and they're asking Dad about empathy.

Jon starts rubbing his nose halfway through Dad's answer, blinking a tad too fast. "I'm getting older, but my favorite quotation in the world is from Danusha Goska's essay on political paralysis," Dad says, leaning back against his chair. Emily's heard this a million times before, but something about the way he's saying it today makes her rock forward on her feet. "She says, when we study the biographies of our heroes, we find that most of their time was spent in quiet preparation, doing tiny, decent things, until one historic moment catapults them to center stage, and causes them to tilt empires. I have tried to live my life in a way, when I have the opportunity, I do the tiny, decent things." He meets Emily's eyes across the room and smiles. "And I've tried to teach your bride that as well."

"That is—a very, very nice thing," Jon says, voice hitching, and then he turns toward her, too, face opening up like a flower in full bloom, so soft that her heart suddenly feels too tight for her ribcage. "Uh, my bride-to-be is actually in the room right now. Emily, you wanna come say hi?"

"Hi, pod people," Emily says, and Jon and Tommy's laughter breaks through the odd heaviness of the moment.

"Tim kept talking about Lovett," Jon complains, after they've finished recording the outro and the ads. Predictably, he starts grinning halfway through the sentence. "Almost enough to give someone a complex."

Emily shakes her head. "Well, I was planning to tell Dad about our backup plan tonight, so maybe it's good that he's on the mind," she says, and Jon straightens up, reaching out to thread their fingers together.

"Do you need me to be there?"

She's honestly not sure if it would be better if he was, and this feels like something she should do alone, anyway. "No, but thank you for offering," she says, squeezing his hand. "I might need you after, though."

"Anything," he says, and squeezes back.

She'd prepared a little speech to deliver when the time came, but when she actually finds Dad after dinner, every thought she might have had about the subject beforehand goes flying out the window. He's in the study, reading glasses slipped halfway down his nose, and he guiltily tries to cram a packet of amicus briefs into the desk as she slips in through the door.

Emily rolls her eyes, some of her nerves evaporating. "Really, Dad?"

"No rest for the wicked, you know," he says, coughing into his hand, and Emily laughs.

"I guess it's good Jon's marrying into a family of workaholics," she says. "He'll fit right in." She glances around for a moment, hoping to draw courage from familiar surroundings, the dusty volumes lining the shelves, the old mahogany desk she always hid under when they played hide and seek every summer. When she looks back, Dad's gazing at her over the frames of his glasses, expectant. "I wanted to talk to you about an alternative plan for Saturday."

Dad raises his eyebrows. "I thought we were going over all of that at the rehearsal tomorrow."

"This one is… special," she says, and steels herself. "It's gonna sound crazy, but Jon and Lovett—they switch bodies, sometimes?" Dad's face remains opaque. She presses on. "We don't know why, but it's been happening since last October, and it's kind of unpredictable. They can't control it." She bites her bottom lip. "It's not exactly common knowledge, but we wanted to have something in place in case it happened before the ceremony."

"I see," Dad says, steepling his fingers. "So what's your plan?" Emily tells him, lists out the different scenarios as succinctly as she can, vows swapped in the study or the kitchen or one of the bedrooms. He thinks for a minute, brow furrowed, and then says, "You know, Emily, if Jon's really a cover for your secret marriage to Lovett, you could've just told me."

"Dad," she says, helpless. "I'm being serious." He doesn't say anything else, but he does pick up his pen and start playing with it, fiddling with the cap. It's hard to decide whether this scenario is better or worse than if he'd just turned her down outright. "Dad, I'm dying over here."

He's quiet for another moment, and then he says, "Your great-uncle," and falters.

It's Emily's turn to be confused. "What?"

"I didn't think—that branch of cousins. It's been years." He twirls his pen again, and it's so strange to see her father fumbling with his words that Emily just—waits. "I used to hear stories about Uncle James at family reunions in Boston. About how sometimes, it seemed like he wasn't himself, like he'd totally swapped personalities."

Emily frowns, off-kilter, and tries to wrap her head around what he's saying.

"It was all family gossip," he continues, rapping his pen against his desk. "You understand. I also heard that he was having an affair with his best friend's wife because your Aunt Helen saw them kissing once. That kind of thing." He shrugs. "Uncle James was married, too, so there was a big argument one Memorial Day amongst some of the other parents, the older folks. I never understood why it was such a big deal to them; I always assumed they were just swingers." Her face must do something funny, because he smiles at her, eyes twinkling. "Yes, Emily, I know what swingers are."

" _Dad_ ," she says, drawing a hand over her eyes. "I didn't need that information."

She can hear him chuckling. "I just wanted to tell you that it's not quite as crazy as you're afraid it is. The body switching thing, at least. No one really took the idea seriously, but maybe they should've."

"I—" Emily says, and has to sit down in the chair in front of Dad's desk. It's not that she really thought that they were alone in this, but the confirmation is something else. In her own family, even. "Okay. So you believe me."

She glances up again. Dad's face is soft. "I do," he says, and Emily sags back in the chair, blinking against the prickling in her eyes. "You're like me, Em—you try to think everything through before you do it. That's usually a pretty good thing. I trust that you wouldn't have come to me if it wasn't true." He finally puts his pen down, folds his hands together, pins her with a sharp look. "James and Millicent and William and Charlotte seemed happy enough with their arrangement."

Emily swallows around the lump in her throat and nods. Something about the way he says it makes her wonder. She thinks about Jon and Lovett, waking up sandwiched between them on lazy Saturday mornings when she doesn't want to get out of bed before noon, how they'll be moving in with each other at the end of the summer, into a big bungalow with enough room for all of them, and the doodles to boot. Dad doesn't seem mad about what she just told him, and he doesn't seem surprised, which is why she says, "We're happy with ours, too," voice shaking, and looks back at him, straight in the eye. "All three of us."

"I'm glad," he says, clearing his throat, misty-eyed behind his glasses. "I've always thought we needed another straight shooter in this family." Emily laughs, watery. "If this is what you want, I'm behind you a hundred percent." A beat, and then: "I'm going to tell your mother about it, though. I think she deserves to know."

"Yes," she manages. "That's—you're right. Absolutely. Thank you." It feels like she's been thanking people a lot lately, but then, she has a lot to be grateful for.

Dad gently shifts the conversation to other logistical topics, who's picking the flowers up and when the other guests would be starting to arrive tomorrow, and she doesn't get back to her room until half past nine. Jon's tucked in bed, typing on his laptop. He perks up when he sees her, folding down the edge of the blanket. "How'd it go?"

"Better than I expected," she sighs, climbing beneath the sheets. She can tell them about Great-uncle James and all the rest later, when she's less frazzled.

His brow wrinkles with concern. "How do you feel?"

She takes stock of her boneless relief, the exhaustion that dogs her heels after every emotionally draining conversation, no matter how well it plays out. "Good," she says, curling up against him, and is faintly surprised to find that it's true.

 

 

They spent Fourth of July weekend in DC, and she didn't realize what Jon was planning to do until he slid down on one knee at the waterfront and asked.

They'd discussed marriage before, but only in the briefest terms; they wanted to, eventually, the same way they wanted to have kids someday, in a future that still seemed far off. This was happening now, though, the immediacy of it striking her like a blow to the chest. For a moment, she couldn't speak, could hardly breathe. Jon was looking up at her, as nervous as she'd ever seen him. There was a live band playing music on the other side of the pier, tourists wandering around taking pictures, Leo sniffing at her sandals, the leash in her hand gone slack. The summer breeze flirted with the hem of her yellow sundress, the skirt billowing around her legs. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you," Jon said, voice quiet but clear. "Will you marry me?"

His mouth only trembled when Emily started crying. "Yes, obviously," she said, trying not to choke around the words. She pressed a hand to her mouth as he stood up to hug her, eyes rimmed red.

The ring was simple, lovely, light on her finger after he slid it on. "Lovett helped me pick it out," he said, and laughed thickly when Emily asked, "You trusted him with that?" Before he could reply, a sweet lady from Philadelphia named Doris interrupted to ask for their emails, so she could send them the video she'd been taking where she caught the tail end of the proposal.

There were times in your life where you felt so incandescently happy that it was hard to figure out what to do next, the sheer emotion filling every crack and crevice of your body until your ears were ringing with it. They walked along the waterfront till after sunset; Jon kept trapping her against the railing and kissing her, to Leo's consternation. Emily's mouth felt swollen, all her lipstick kissed off, eyeliner probably smudged beyond repair. She didn't care. It didn't matter. She felt so light that it seemed like the wind could just pick her up and blow her away.

She sent a message she hoped was coherent to the family group text later that night, when she was cleaning her face off in the hotel bathroom, and then she navigated to their WhatsApp convo with Lovett. The last things he'd sent them were 1) a link to an article about the Democratic primaries, 2) the address of some new brunch place he wanted to try, and 3) a series of incoherent Nicolas Cage memes.

 _we're officially getting hitched_ , she typed out into the text box, along with a string of confetti emoji. _didn't know u had such good taste in engagement rings?_

 _!!!!!!!_ Lovett sent back, almost immediately. _i also have opinions about flowers_.

Her phone buzzed again on the counter a minute later. _of course u do_ , read Jon's message. _we haven't even decided on a date yet, hold your horses._

 _it's never too early to be thinking about these things, jonathan!!!_ Lovett replied, and Emily resigned herself to, at minimum, a solid week full of messages about floral arrangements in the group chat. She wasn't too bothered by the idea; at the very least, they were guaranteed to be much prettier than Nic Cage's face.

 

 

Lovett arrives at the house in full form on Friday morning, lugging a suitcase full of wedding koozies up the driveway. When Emily meets him at the door, he says, "That's my workout for the day," leaning dramatically against the wall and wiping nonexistent sweat off his forehead.

"Your biceps do seem bigger now," Emily says, straight-faced.

"Don't patronize me," Lovett says, but he starts laughing when she does, and he lets her squeeze his fingers briefly as he hands the suitcases over.

In the afternoon, Heidi leads the wedding party through three walkthroughs of the essential elements of the ceremony. Afterwards, they join the guests that have already arrived, eat lobster for dinner in the tent set up for tomorrow's reception, bibs tucked into the collars of their shirts. Corn ends up stuck in between everyone's teeth, and the warm drawn butter makes Jon's lips shiny enough that they leave a mark when he kisses her cheek.

Emily laughs, wiping it off, and—she's been so preoccupied with the logistics that she'd almost forgotten that this is supposed to be _fun_. The best time of her life to date. Something to sit back and really enjoy. She lets the low rumble of conversation and the crack of lobster shells and the faint music playing over the sound system wash over her. She's warm and well-fed and surrounded by people she loves. It's good.

Once everyone's mostly finished eating, picking at the last bits of claw meat, Lovett primly clinks his fork against his champagne flute and makes his way on stage. He's changed into a button-up shirt for this, which Emily makes a mental note to tease him for later. Heidi hands him a microphone. Tommy whoops, and somebody—Tanya, maybe—wolf whistles from the back.

"Thank you all for coming to my keynote address, the most important part of your weekend," Lovett begins, and Emily can already tell her face is going to feel sore from smiling by the end of this. "I considered several different approaches when I was asked to give a toast at this dinner." He starts ticking off on his fingers. "A few of the options: interpretive dance, Dungeons and Dragons style choose-your-own-adventure with audience participation, doing it all in my _excellent_ Seb Gorka impression—"

A mixture of laughter and groans. Next to her, Jon pinches the bridge of his nose.

Lovett shrugs, shit-eating grin wide on his face, hand held aloft in a flourish. "Yeah, I didn't think so either. In the interest of time, I decided to keep it short and simple, lest Heidi play me off with an Ariana Grande remix." He pauses briefly, and then spins toward the audience. "How I met Jon is basically public knowledge at this point. People have written about it in books, you know. And it was on the wedding website, so I don't want to subject you all to the details again. Suffice to say that I was hired for my immense wit and remarkable talent, and now Jon and Emily are stuck with me forever."

People are still laughing, but Emily tilts her head against Jon's shoulder, and he hooks an arm around her back. She can't see his face, but she knows he's smiling.

"The first time I met Emily in person was about a year after they started dating," Lovett says. "Jon was celebrating his birthday, and Emily was celebrating completing the SATs." More laughter, applause. "I just happened to be in town, so I dropped in for the festivities."

"Fake news, he flew in just for me," Jon murmurs under his breath, and Emily grins into her hand.

"We were on a party bus on the way to Maryland," Lovett continues. "The first thing she said to me was, _you look taller in person_ ," pause, laughter, "and the second thing was _come help me get Jon's shirt off_ , and in that moment, I realized that our relationship would be one of tremendous mutual appreciation."

Jon's shaking his head, chuckling helplessly, hand squeezing Emily's shoulder. She remembers that night, the look on Lovett's face when she'd asked him to be her partner in crime, the look on Jon's when he realized he was suddenly shirtless, the gargantuan hangovers they'd all had the morning after. A good time, all things considered.

"I now have the dubious honor of being, in her words, Emily's weirdest friend. She's almost ten years younger than I am, but I have to say, she has the most poise of anyone I've met—unless you're talking shit about Taylor Swift. She's definitely _my_ most put-together friend. Sorry, Tommy. This is a toast about the Favreaus, so you gotta take one for the team." When she looks over, Tommy's rolling his eyes, but he's grinning. "Emily emails me about new haircut options and my Twitter profile picture and where to go to get nicer shirts on sale, because the ones I own are older than she is. By contrast, Jon emails me when the office has run out of toilet paper, so I think we all know who the adult in the relationship is."

"That was one time," Jon complains, and Lovett wags a finger at him.

"Still," he says, and then he tucks his gesturing hand beneath his arm, expression turning serious. Emily's been watching him perform on stage since March, folding himself into pretzels at the Hollywood Improv, but something about the way he looks now makes her heart jump into her throat. "Over the past few years, I've had the privilege of living across the street from Jon and Emily, which means Leo's poop has been great fertilizer for the grass on my lawn. But more importantly, it's been a pleasure watching them grow together. Jon and Emily have the same drive, the same passion, the same firm belief in one another. They fit together, like the Taylor Swift-Obama photoshop I gave them as an engagement present did not. They make each other better, and they make everyone around them better too." He steps back toward where he started, at the front of the stage, fingers flexing around the microphone. "When I was first getting to know Jon, he made everything seem effortless. Emily, too—beautiful people generally do. But the reality is that they work so hard. They do so much. A lot has happened in the last year, but nothing makes me happier than waking up every morning knowing that they're on my side."

Jon shifts against her, pinching his nose again for a different reason entirely. Emily meets Lovett's eyes. There's a half-smile on his face, soft and private. It makes her chest feel tight, like someone's squeezed all the air out of her lungs. She thinks, _I love you too_ , the back of her throat aching with it, and smiles back.

"Ginger Rogers once said that when two people love each other, they don't look at each other. They look in the same direction." Lovett tilts his head. "Jon, Emily: congratulations. I'm so happy that you found each other, and I'm so excited for you to spend the rest of your lives coming to Lovett or Leave It every Friday night." He gives a little bow as the laughter crescendos and turns into cheering. "Thank you."

Jon turns toward her as Lovett makes his way back to his table. "He's so," he says, and doesn't manage to finish the sentence.

"He is," she replies. She knows what he means.

 

 

By the time December rolled around again, Lovett's ritual of coming over to help decorate the tree was a foregone conclusion. He approached hanging lights with genuine fervor, despite his token protestations on the grounds of being Jewish, and sprawled out on the carpet afterward, the dogs piled on top of him. Jon ordered dinner from the Greek place half a block away, as was traditional. They sat down on the floor next to Lovett when the food arrived, because the dining table was too covered with detritus from their brainstorming sessions with Tommy to actually eat on, passing the box of spanakopita back and forth and talking about their plans. Lovett spent a long time staring moodily at the White House ornament before Jon said, sighing, "Just hang it up, who knows when we'll be able to do it again?"

"When you're right, you're right," Lovett said, heaving himself up, and tucked it next to one of the baubles.

Three weeks later, on Christmas Eve, Jon and Lovett swapped bodies for the second time. They spent the next three days pretending to be each other, and Emily, ever the details person, spent it mentally cataloguing how all their little mannerisms manifested in one another's bodies. Maybe it was just because she'd been paying attention for so long, but it felt like—once you knew what to look for, it was pretty easy to figure out. They had more tells than they cared to admit, like the way Jon immediately sought touch like a moth toward light, and how Lovett always started out near the edge of the bed every night and inevitably ended up wrapped around them by morning.

Andy and Molly came over for dinner on Christmas Day. They had good food and good conversation, and Andy told his favorite holiday story about Jon's polisci TA and the mistletoe. She and Jon had swapped stories about their college experiences pretty early on, but it occurred to her, as she listened to Andy recount the tale for the third year running, that she'd mostly just assumed Lovett already knew. He was smooth about it during dinner, but she noticed the way he got quiet later, in the kitchen, when they were putting all the leftovers away. She thought about it on and off in the days after they switched back, picking through everything that had happened.

Lovett didn't come over for their standing brunch date the morning of New Years' Eve, citing another engagement with a friend who was in town over the holidays, so she and Jon stayed in bed till noon, scrolling on their devices. Emily finished going through her emails, and then rolled over, pushed up on one elbow. "You and Lovett are okay, right?" She reached out to tap his temple. "No missing parts, no weird gaps in memory."

Jon laughed a little. "No," he said. "This time was less stressful than October, mostly because one of us wasn't completely hungover."

"You guys did a good job," Emily said. "Lovett does a very convincing you."

Jon shrugged. "He's known Andy and Molly for years, so it wasn't too bad. We swapped notes in the kitchen, when we were heating food up together." He paused, not quite looking at her; she waited. "He'd never heard the TA story before, so I had to talk to him about that."

Emily let her head rest against her shoulder. "He didn't know," she said, quiet. "About you. You never told him."

"No," Jon said, biting his lip. "I hadn't meant to keep it a secret, really, but it just turned out that way."

"How'd he take it?"

"Pretty well, I thought," Jon said, but he looked kind of uncertain. _But he's not here right now_ , was the second half of that thought, hanging in the air between them. It made her wonder. It made Emily want to push forward, determined, to see what she could uncover.

She reached out, slid a hand against Jon's neck, thumb brushing along the sharp line of his jaw. "You know, I'd assumed," she said, slow and deliberate, "that you and Lovett—that maybe you two had—"

Jon shook his head, vehement, before Emily could even finish. "We haven't."

"You've thought about it, though," Emily prompted, and several expressions flashed across Jon's face at once—shock, guilt, panic. "It's okay," she said, fingers pressing into Jon's skin, the prickle of his stubble. "It's Lovett."

"Emily," he said, helpless. "I love you."

"I know," Emily said, tapping his chin, and smiled. "You just—love him too. That's all. So do I."

"Yeah, but it's not the same," he tried to protest.

Emily gazed at him for a long moment, eyes narrowed and assessing. He looked away first, face flushed, the line of his throat bobbing as he swallowed. She edged closer, hand cupping his cheek. She wasn't quite sure what she was doing here, but the heavy warmth around them made her feel courageous. They were walking together toward something new. Uncharted territory. Jon was all heart, but sometimes he needed a little nudging in the right direction. "Isn't it, though?" she asked, chiding. "You don't have to answer now. But—take some time. Think about it."

Jon exhaled. "Okay," he said, which already felt like a tiny victory, and met her mouth when she leaned down to reward him with a kiss.

 

 

In the end, everything goes off without a hitch. No crazy news drops the morning of the wedding, Leo trots out with the rings exactly as rehearsed, and Jon and Lovett stay in their rightful bodies, decked out in their snazzy suits. Emily's vibrating with energy as her parents walk her down the aisle, but when she steps up to take Jon's hand beneath the arch, she knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it's him. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Lovett grinning like an idiot behind Andy, and something about that makes her stomach settle. She threads her fingers through Jon's. Dad folds his hands in front of him, smiling, and begins to speak.

She floats all the way through the ceremony, their vows (Jon's are infuriatingly perfect, which she knew they would be, even as he scrambled to print a copy of them out in Dad's study that morning), the walk from their backyard to the reception tent, through dinner and the first dance with her dad. Later, she'll be able to look at their photos and watch their videos and recall every single thing, crystalline and preserved in her memory, but time always seems to pass differently when you're actually living through moments like this. There's just so much to take in all at once.

Lovett cuts in at one point during the dancing, sliding smoothly to take Jon's place. She watches him spin off with Abby over Lovett's shoulder, and then Lovett's beaming at her, hand squeezing her hip. "We didn't have to use any of your plans, Danny Ocean, but I appreciate them all the same," he murmurs in her ear, and she's laughing when he dips her.

"Please, Jon," she says, arm hooked around the back of his neck, their faces inches apart. "I'm much better looking than George Clooney." 

"You are," he replies, which is definitely one of the highest compliments he's ever paid her, and eases her upright again. "So, I don't know what exactly you said to your dad, but…"

Emily grins. "What happened?"

"Em, he found me after the ceremony and expressed in no uncertain terms that if I ever hurt you, _you'd_ make my life hell." He snorts, soft. "As if I didn't already know that."

She laughs again, shakes her head. "I didn't really tell him so much as he filled in the blanks himself." The song ends, and they twirl to a stop in front of the main table. Jon's leaned against it, watching them with a giddy smile. "I told you he was open-minded."

"Yeah, well," Lovett says, and leans in to kiss the corner of her mouth, brief but warm. "That'll teach me to ever doubt you again."

She's already tipsy from champagne when the after party starts that evening, and the buzz only gets stronger from there. The boys are still in their suits, but Emily's changed into a more manageable dress, something she can really move in without having to worry about tearing the fabric. They spend the next two hours getting hay all over their clothes. Emily alternates between taking shots of vodka and singing along with every song she remembers the words to, and the ones she doesn't, too. Hanna's wearing the garter Tommy caught earlier like a headband, and Andy's just drinking straight from one of the bottles, too lazy to pour. She can hear Abby laughing high and loud, can see Lovett and Alyssa and Tanya sitting with their heads bent together on one of the squishy couches, no doubt scheming. Even Dan's getting down, grin wide across his face beneath the strobe lights. All their people, squeezed inside a tiny barn in Maine, music blowing out the windows. She couldn't have drawn it up any better.

It's close to one in the morning by the time her feet are too sore to stand on anymore. She flops back against a bale of hay, feeling drunk in all the ways it's possible to feel drunk—off good liquor and good company, from alcohol and exhaustion and sheer joy. "Jon," she says, reaching out for him with purpose, and he scoops an arm around her waist and one beneath her knees, lifts her up like it's nothing.

"Shall we?" he says, voice raspy with promise, and she shivers all the way down to her toes.

She tucks her head against Jon's neck, lets the rhythmic cadence of his walking lull her into a liminal space, not quite fully awake but not yet asleep. Jon murmurs with someone that sounds like Heidi, and then they're moving further away from the noise.

"Hello, Favreaus," comes Lovett's voice, clear as a bell, an indefinite amount of time later. When she lifts her head, he's smiling broadly at them. They're behind a couple of bales of hay, by the back door, the one that leads to the house instead of out toward the main street.

"Hi, Lovett," Emily says, wiggling her fingers.

"Heidi's about to break it all up and send everyone back to the hotels," Jon says. "We're gonna try to sneak out."

"Have fun?" Lovett offers, and Emily snorts, inelegant.

"Don't be stupid, you're coming with us," she says, and watches him freeze. It's always satisfying, having the ability to render Lovett speechless, if only for a moment. Sweet boy. He really thought they were just going to leave him here. It might take a while to cure him of that impulse, but the journey toward that future seems bright. She can't wait to get there.

"You sure?" he says eventually.

"Very," they say in unison, and Lovett laughs, low and pleased, shakes his head like he can't believe it. Emily squirms in Jon's arms, taps his shoulder. "I'm good to stand now."

She sways forward a little as she lands on her feet, and Jon's hand braces against her shoulder. Lovett automatically hooks an arm around her waist to steady her from the other side. They walk out together.

 

 

"I've thought about it," Jon said abruptly in January, a few days after New Year's, less than a week before he and Lovett and Tommy were set to embark on their grand new adventure. Emily was sitting at the dining table sorting through mail, and he was standing next to the piano, shifting on his feet. "About me and Lovett. Us and Lovett."

Emily looked up and propped her chin in one hand. "And?"

He ducked his head, scratching sheepishly at the back of his neck. "You're right."

"I'm always right," Emily replied without missing a beat, and smiled when he met her eyes again.

Jon chewed on his lip for a moment, eyebrows slanting downward. "So. Now what?"

"I'm, uh, less clear on that," she said, and then stood up to fold her arms around him, because it looked like he needed the hug. Admittedly, he'd had less time to get used to the idea. It was a lot to process. "Hey. We'll figure it out. We always do."

" _You_ always do," Jon said into her neck, a gentle correction, and she chuckled, rubbing her nose against his collarbone. He wasn't wrong.

She thought about the way Lovett watched them sometimes, the small smile that passed over his face when he didn't think either of them was looking, and—it wouldn't be that hard, she didn't think. She hadn't gotten this far to quit before even trying.

"Stick around for the ride, Favreau," she said, squeezing him tighter. "I won't steer us wrong."

 

 

Somehow, they manage to make it back to the main house without breaking anything or getting lost on the way. It's quiet inside; Mom and Dad left them the place for the night. Emily flips a dim light next to the staircase on and leads them up to the old room she and Abby used to share. There’s a new bed, a queen rather than the twins they had, and the decor's been updated. It's probably still kind of weird to be having wedding night sex in a place so drenched with childhood memories, but she's too drunk and happy to care. Her boys are with her, and there's a nice bed on which to do whatever they want. What more could she ask for?

"Well, my suit is totally ruined," Lovett says, and when Emily looks over he's inspecting himself in the boudoir mirror.

"We'll get you a new one," Jon says, laughing, at the same time Emily says, "Take it off, then."

Lovett turns and looks at her, eyes gone dark, and then at Jon, who tilts his head, licks his lips. "You heard the lady."

"You too," Emily says, nudging Jon's back, and goes to settle against the headboard, wiggling out of her dress.

None of them are particularly coordinated at this level of intoxication, and Emily's too giggly to really dictate as much as she'd like, but that's okay. They'll have time for all of that later. For now, it's enough that she gets to watch Jon and Lovett start kissing, soft and tentative until Jon turns it dirty, pulls a desperate groan out of Lovett's chest. It's enough that the room fills with Jon's sighing when Lovett sucks a mark into his neck, that Jon leans over to brush his lips against hers as Lovett bends down to get his around Jon's dick, that she can taste Lovett in every corner of Jon's mouth. It's enough to be moving with and against each other: one of Jon's nimble hands slipping across her hip and her stomach, two fingers sliding inside her before they're replaced by the slick press of his tongue, Lovett's fingers threading through her hair, breath hot against the round part of her shoulder. It's enough that when Lovett comes, both their names are on his lips, and Emily gets to hold him, shuddering, through it.

Jon kicks half the pillows off the bed, after, and Lovett stares at the ceiling for a minute, panting a little, before saying, inanely, "Thanks for inviting me to the second after party." Emily turns her face into his neck, shaking with laughter, and feels Jon draw the comforter over all of them.

They all smell like hay and champagne and one another, and they're a warm, satisfied heap by the time she's drifting off to sleep, which is always how she thought she'd end a night like this. It's fucking perfect.

 

*

 

Emily gets back to Los Angeles first, alone, on a sunny Tuesday afternoon the last week of June, saddled with four suitcases full of dirty clothes and as many souvenirs from Italy as they could fit in the leftover space. Jon's meeting Tommy in DC for the march; she'd seen him off in Rome, looking tanned and well-rested, a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. Lovett's en route to Aspen. They're like ships passing on the 405.

The house seems big and empty without them, even though the dogs are there to keep her company, and jet lag sets in pretty quickly. Emily passes out in the empty bed as late as she can make it, which is a frankly heroic seven o'clock. The sleep she gets isn't great, but she wakes up at three in the morning to pictures of Lovett at the conference in Colorado and Jon yelling on Twitter about healthcare, so. Things feel a little more right in the world.

She spends most of Wednesday doing laundry and tripping over the unopened wedding gifts piled in the living room without bothering to find places for any of them, and goes back to work on Thursday. She's groggy as hell by mid-afternoon. "Just work from home tomorrow," her boss advises, taking pity as she's leaving the office, and she grimaces at him in thanks.

She dozes off in the middle of an email at the dining table after lunch on Friday, and wakes up to Jon and Lovett letting themselves in the front door. She's still in her pajamas and her hair is a mess and her glasses have probably left weird indentations on her face, but they're both smiling at her like they missed her as much as she missed them. That's really the only thing that matters.

"Welcome home," she says, smiling back, and rises to meet them.

**Author's Note:**

> when i first decided to write a wacky story about bodyswaps, the last thing i expected was for it to turn into an extended 34k love letter to emjonjon, but here we are. thanks so much for coming along for the ride. ♥


End file.
